The Magic of Christmas
by angel85qcca
Summary: Rossi can't help it when he notices thing about his friends' behaviour: it's instinct. Or is it wishful thinking? Rated T for language.


**A.N.: Merry Christmas! I know I've been busy and not updating as much so I'm sorry. Here is a little Christmas Criminal Minds goodness to tide you over. I wrote this for yulian, for the CCOAC Christmas Gift Fic Exchange. My prompts were: Jingle Bells, gingerbread house, snow, and reindeer. I hope you like it!**

**This is un-betaed, so I'm sorry for any mistakes!**

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><p>David Rossi is a profiler. Actually, he's not just<em> a<em> profiler; he's one of the best profilers out there. So really, when he notices things about his friends' behaviour, it's not because he's trying to consciously profile them: it's instinct, something he can't turn off.

When he pulls up in front of JJ's house, one Sunday before Christmas, and notices she doesn't have as many decorations outside as she did last year, he doesn't mean to do it. He wonders what it means, of course, but since he's not supposed to be profiling her, he can't ask about it.

Unless, of course, it becomes so obvious that he can't _not_ ask about it.

Rossi stands on the front porch of her small town house and is about to knock when he hears the cutest thing he's ever heard in his life (not that Rossi uses the word _cute_, ever.)

"Jinga' bells, jinga' bells, jinga' awww daway!" Henry sings.

Rossi chuckles and tries to go back to a somewhat straight face before knocking.

JJ's all out of breath when she opens the door. "Dave, hi! Thank you so much for coming!" She immediately steps back so he can come in.

"It's no problem, I said. I haven't made a gingerbread house in ages, but I'm pretty sure I remember how. Anyways, with my mother's recipe, we can't go wrong."

When JJ takes his coat and places it the hall closet, Rossi can't help but notice, one more time, that there isn't even one man's coat in there, only JJ's long jackets and Henry's little ones. _It's not your place to say anything,_ he thinks.

"Henry, come say hello to Mr. Rossi," JJ asks the little boy who is running around the living room with a stuffed toy reindeer in his hand, making it jump from the couch, to the table, to the TV.

The loveseat is missing.

"Jinga' bells, jinga' bells, jinga' awww daway!" Henry sings as a greeting, looking at Rossi with a proud look on his face.

"They taught him this song at daycare and now he won't stop," JJ explains, discouraged.

Rossi laughs. "That's alright. Maybe this week they'll teach him a new one."

"Let's hope," JJ says with a smile as she leads him to the kitchen. Per his instructions, she's gotten everything on the shopping list he made for her and she has laid it all on the counter. "Why don't we get started right away; I don't want to waste your time."

Rossi shakes his head. "I told you, I'm glad to do it, and I didn't have anything else planned for today, so I'm all yours until tonight." As soon as he says it he realizes it sounds a little flirty, but what else can he say? His mind is already playing tricks on him now that it seems that Will is gone. He sees a big red vacancy sign flashing in his head, and David Rossi is not one to pass up an opportunity as good as this one.

When he'd first met JJ he'd of course been attracted to her, but as soon as he realized she had someone in her life, he'd backed off. No matter what his reputation, he had never broken up a happy relationship and he wasn't about to start. But if her situation had changed...

Rossi clears his throat, trying to focus his mind back to the task at hand. "So, why again are we doing this?" he asks the mother.

She sighs. "They're doing a gingerbread village at Henry's daycare, and everyone has to bring a house. Well, someone's bringing a church, and someone else a school, and I think a couple of people are supposed to bring store, but since I've never done this, I figured a house was the safest bet for me."

Rossi shakes his head in disbelief. "Who the hell comes up with that stuff? Don't parents have enough to do with the Holidays coming up? It's not like the kids care, Henry just turned three!"

JJ nods. "I know, right? I'll bet it was some stay-at-home mom's idea."

Rossi laughs out loud. "Why don't you just buy a kit? All you'd have to do is decorate it."

JJ's head shakes violently, as if it was the most preposterous idea. "No, all the other kids' houses will be made from scratch. I don't want Henry to get picked on or anything."

Rossi chooses not to comment and they start putting together the dough. When he opens the fridge to get the milk he notices there is no beer, only a half-bottle of white wine. _Don't go there,_ he thinks again.

But he can't not think about it, so instead of just blurting out something, he stays quiet. But JJ's a profiler now, too, and even if she wasn't, she would have noticed. It's not like Rossi to stay quiet for so long.

"You can ask, you know," she says quietly.

Rossi looks up at her, surprised. Not surprised that she knows he knows, but surprised that she wants to talk about it. With him, when she's obviously hid it from everyone on the team. But she's given him the green light and he's so curious it's driving him crazy. "Where's Will, JJ?" he asks just as quietly, mindful of Henry in the other room, occasionally still singing Jingle Bells while he keeps playing with the stuffed toy.

She focuses on evening out the dough on the cookie sheet, not looking at him as she talks. "He moved out. We had a big fight when I told him I wanted to take the classes and become a profiler, but it wasn't going so well even before that. If I hadn't gotten pregnant with Henry, I don't know how long we would have ended up being together. I mean, we were doing the long-distance thing, and it was going well enough, but being together every day? It became obvious very quickly that we didn't picture our lives the same way. We tried to make it work as long as possible for Henry, but going back to the BAU was the breaking point for him."

She puts the cookie sheet in the oven, sets the timer and finally turns around to look at him. There are no tears in her eyes, only resolution.

"How's Henry doing with this?" he asks, because he can't think of anything else to say.

She shrugs her shoulders. "He regressed for a while, but he's back to normal now. We've worked out a pretty good routine. Will stays here when I have to stay overnight on cases, and he takes him as much as he can. We think he's too small for him to stay over at Will's place, so we haven't worked out a set custody agreement yet."

Rossi nods and opens his mouth to ask how she is doing, suddenly becoming a single parent, when Henry interrupts them.

"Mommy, Mommy, snow!" he yells from the living room.

JJ smiles and walks over to him, picks him up, and they both look out the window. Rossi follows her and contemplates the softly falling snowflakes.

"Henry, do you know the song White Christmas?" JJ asks her son. The little boy shakes his head.

As he listens to JJ's soft singing voice, Rossi wonders about the magic of Christmas. He'd lost faith that anything good could happen at this time of the year a long time ago, but maybe, just maybe, this year would be the exception.


End file.
